page_title: St Nicholas Church, Kenilworth
section_title: Alterations after the Reformation
hierarchical_section_title: St Nicholas Church, Kenilworth / History / Alterations after the Reformation
caption_attribution_description: English: Sundial on the southwest corner of the south aisle of the parish church of St Nicholas, Kenilworth, Warwickshire
context_page_description: St Nicholas Church is a Church of England parish church in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England.
  The church is built of local red sandstones. The main phases of building are Decorated Gothic, Perpendicular Gothic and a Gothic Revival Victorian restoration of 1864. It is a Grade I listed building.
  The church is a short distance south of the High Street, next to the Norman and Gothic ruins of St Mary's Abbey, over which much of the churchyard of St Nicholas now extends.
context_section_description: The abbey was largely demolished by 1547. In the demolition some architectural fragments were salvaged from the abbey and incorporated into the parish church. Most notable of these is the Norman west portal in the west tower, which Nikolaus Pevsner and Alexandra Wedgwood called "the most sumptuous Norman doorway in Warwickshire". This doorway may in fact be a composite, created in the 16th century from elements of more than one doorway of the demolished abbey.
  Workmen demolishing the abbey melted down the lead from the roof to make "pigs" or "fothers" to be taken away. One such "pig" was lost until 1888, when it was found in the ruins. It bears the stamp of King Henry VIII's Commissioners. It is now displayed in the northeast corner of the chancel. In 1922 an archæological excavation of the abbey site found the sand-moulds for casting the pigs.
  The nave had a steeply pitched roof until 1580, when Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester had it lowered to its present shallow pitch. The line of the earlier roof survives as a trace on the east side of the tower. The chancel] roof was taken down and relaid in 1692 under the auspices of the then Vicar, William Best, at a cost of £80.
  Although the base of the font is Norman, the stem and bowl are later. They were made in 1664, to replace one that seems to have been broken in the English Civil War.
  In the 18th century galleries were added to the nave and aisles to increase seating capacity. A gallery in the north aisle was added in 1751, followed by one in the south aisle in 1760. No record survives of when the west gallery for church musicians was added, but it is known to have existed by 1772. All three galleries were removed in 1850. Two years later a second Anglican church for Kenilworth, that of St John the Evangelist, was completed on the south side of the town, relieving the crowding of St Nicholas'.
caption: Stone sundial at the west end of the south aisle
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